Neil Gaiman in The Truth is a Cave in the Black Mountains at the Carnegi Hall June 2014

This production was originally commissioned by Sydney Opera House for its Graphic Festival and we saw the first of two nights at the Barbican to be followed by one night at Usher Hall in Edinburgh.

Having read and loved Neil Gaiman’s novels Coraline and The Graveyard Book I was looking forward to seeing this with my two teenage children. From his books and his tweets, I expected Neil Gaiman to be more zappy and over-the-top in person; but he isn’t; he’s gentle and laidback and low-key in his manner, with a self-deprecating humour.

Surely this is the best persona for him to adopt as he tells his tales. Anyone who knows his work expects a playfully dark twist. And this was fully realized in his novelette The Truth is a Cave in the Black Mountains. In this he has chosen to create a Scottish tale, a grim and sombre story of revenge, written with a poetic quality appropriate for a tale from the Outer Hebrides set at the time of the Jacobite rebellion.

It was accompanied by big-screen projections of the illustrations by Eddie Campbell which were astonishingly vivid and real, by turns haunting, harsh and beautiful, conveying the atmosphere of the terrain and the ever-darker direction of the story. We were held captivated throughout Neil Gaiman’s narration; the musicians accompanied the tale with such emotional intelligence and imagination, it was an outstanding display of creative genius.

The story of the dwarf who goes searching for the cave of gold, accompanied by the mysterious tall “border reaver”, has played on my mind ever since, as I considered the rhythm and poetry of it, the elements of darkness and horror, and the moral lesson that lay behind it.

So far in this mini-series, we’ve visited India, Uluru/Ayers Rock in Australia, London, and Sissinghurst in Kent. And today I’m taking you back again to Australia; to Sydney Opera House.

exterior view of opera house

From the air Sydney Opera House looks like a waterlily at the harbour’s edge. Its location on Bennelong Point integrates it perfectly with the water. Close up, it reminds me of four things: seashells, the sails of a ship, the wings of a bird, or a waterlily. This building is the most beautiful I’ve ever seen.

I find the opera house stunning from every aspect, and even more so the closer you draw to it; and the interior of the building fulfills every expectation that may be raised by the breathtaking glory of the exterior.

The story surrounding the creation of the opera house is as engrossing as the design of the building itself. The idea was first suggested by English composer and conductor Leonard Goossens in 1946. The Australian government showed vision by committing to a project that would take generations to fulfill and would win no particular administration any electoral advantage. Then they decided to run an international competition for the design.

The competition was won by a 38 year old Danish architect, Jorn Utzon, with a simple, almost diagrammatic sketch.

Sydney Opera House design sketch

Work began on the opera house in 1959 and it took 14 years to build, opening to the public on 20 October 1973. Utzon’s vision of wing-like structures nearly defeated the civil engineers Ove Arup until the architect himself suggested the solution: to construct a sphere, then cut shells from it, each of which was a triangular shape. Then there was a dispute over the design of the interior; in 1966 Utzon “left the job” and a new architect, Peter Hall, was put in charge of that. Utzon never returned to Australia again, though he later met Arup again on friendly terms. The opera house has progressively increased in stature ever since. And Utzon, although he never returned to Australia to see his beautiful building in reality, knew before he died that it had won UNESCO World Heritage status as “a masterpiece of human creative genius”.

The story is not without its tragedies, blunders, scandals, detractors and failures of communication; yet ultimately imagination, dedication and creative genius triumphed.

This building represents for me a synthesis of human ingenuity, artistry and skill. The poet John Keats said: A thing of beauty is a joy for ever: /Its loveliness increases; it will never/ pass into nothingness. I could never have believed these words might apply to a man-made structure – and I don’t expect the Sydney Opera House to last for ever; but it is a building which uplifts by the sheer power of its beauty.

Another admirer, Louis Kahn, said: The sun did not know how beautiful its light was until it was reflected off this building.

The last time I visited it I also went with my family to see a performance of Verdi’s Aida there in the opera theatre: an unforgettable and moving experience.

Sheila, Abigail, Jamie & David in front of Sydney Opera House

Have you ever visited Sydney Opera House? What are your experiences and feelings about this building? Or perhaps you prefer another of the world’s great buildings – there are many candidates. I’d love to know your own choices!